The "Essex" was now in a very bad way. Many of her men had been killed or wounded, and her rigging was so much cut that she could carry hardly any of her sails. The enemy had suffered no loss worth speaking of. Commodore Porter nevertheless determined to take the offensive. It was a desperate measure, but the only one that seemed to promise any hope. Setting his flying-jib—the only sail he could use—and cutting his cable, he stood down for the enemy. He could not manœuvre much, but for a little while he was near enough to use his broadside of carronades with some effect. But it was only for a little while. The English were fighting a safe battle, and meant to use the safest tactics, which of course it was perfectly right that they should do; and in a little while both ships had withdrawn out of range of the carronades, and the "Phœbe's" long 18-pounders were once more covering the decks of the "Essex" with the bodies of her unlucky men.
Still the "Essex" would not give up. She had been on fire in several places, but the flames were extinguished. Her carronades were many of them disabled,—as always happened with carronades,—and as the guns' crews fell, others took the places of the killed. The cockpit was filled with wounded, so that there was no room for more. The slaughter on board was fearful, for in the smooth water every shot from the enemy told with deadly effect; and at length the captain resolved to run the ship ashore, as the wind was blowing that way, and land the remainder of his men and then destroy the frigate. So he made for the land. But just as he had nearly reached the point where he must touch, the wind shifted and drove him out again.
At this juncture the "Phœbe," being somewhat injured aloft, began to drift to leeward, and Porter, in the hope that she might drift out of range, bent a hawser to the sheet-anchor to hold on where he was. This would have enabled him to gain a little time; but the hawser parted, and with it went the last chance for the "Essex." The boats had been destroyed, but Porter told the men that such as wished might swim for the shore. Most of the crew preferred to remain by the ship, although they knew her hours were numbered. The flames were now coming up from all the hatchways, the hull was riddled, the enemy was still keeping up a raking fire, and the men were falling at every shot. At last, finding all the chances against him, the commodore yielded to fate and gave the order to haul down the flag. Never had the honor of that flag been more gallantly sustained.
Out of two hundred and twenty-five men on board the "Essex," one hundred and fifty-five were killed, wounded, or missing. Captain Hillyar, upon receiving Porter's surrender, entered into an agreement by which the "Essex Junior" was to be converted into a cartel-ship, and so be exempt from capture. In her the captain and the remnant of his crew took passage for the United States, where they at length arrived after nearly two years of absence. Thus ended the eventful cruise of the "Essex."
CHAPTER XIV.
PERRY AND LAKE ERIE.
Returning now, we take up the story of a young officer who, although he had passed fifteen years in the service, had never been so fortunate as to take part in any of its more striking operations, but who was now to leap at one bound to a height of glory and renown unsurpassed by any of his comrades in the navy. This was Oliver Hazard Perry. He had entered the service in 1798, during the hostilities with France, when he joined his father's ship as a midshipman at the age of thirteen. He had served in the Tripolitan war in the squadron of Commodore Morris, and later with Commodore Rodgers; but during Preble's command, when all the great achievements of the war had been performed, it was his ill luck to be at home, and he was thus almost the only one of the victorious commanders of the War of 1812 that had not received his training in the squadron of the great commodore.
Perry was now twenty-seven years old, and a master-commandant,—that is, he was higher than a lieutenant, but lower than a captain. When the war was expected, he went to Washington and begged that he might be ordered into active service against the enemy and given a post suitable to his rank. His request could not at once be granted, and meantime he was placed in command of a gunboat flotilla at Newport. For nine months he carried on his duties here with energy and zeal, but all the time chafing and fretting that he should be concerned with such trivialities while others were winning distinction in great enterprises and fighting battles with the enemy's ships-of-war.